A “big Champions League night” that ended up being quite a nice run-out for Arsenal. Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain looked less a sportswashing project and more a youth project. The level of superiority in this 2-0 win is again to Arsenal’s credit, but should also be a worry for Uefa.
This was one of the big-name fixtures that the new Champions League was sold on – more games between the best, more fixtures, more, more, more – and yet it didn’t really feel like either side treated it as a match of much consequence. It was a world away, say, from 2000-01 when Lyon came to North London and Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal absolutely knew they had to do something.
If it is by now becoming tedious to read about these issues, it is worth remembering that such themes only arise because very little of consequence happens on the pitch. Here, in just the second of eight games, Arsenal got the win that already puts them more than half-way to the top 24. PSG, by contrast, already had their victory from the opening 1-0 win over Girona. It consequently felt like both teams were looking at the game in a wider context, rather than necessarily treating it as an exacting Champions League occasion in itself.
This is the reality of this Swiss system in action, at least in this economic framework.
There was little doubt about the result from the 20th minute, once Kai Havertz had scored a fine headed goal on what was a bad night for Gianluigi Donnarumma. He was beaten to Leandro Trossard’s cross for that moment and then let a Bukayo Saka free-kick cross bounce straight in past him for the second.
It was no more than Arsenal deserved, given both goals came in a period where they had been rampant. That was maybe inevitable, since they are at this point a much more advanced team than PSG.
The French champions actually became so disillusioned with their previous “Galactiques” project they belatedly changed strategy, eventually turning to youth and proper pressing football in 2023. That was why they initially went for Mikel Arteta that summer, because of his success with this exact approach. He’s also been at it three years longer, so Arsenal looked three years better.
They had too much nous, easily overcoming an early PSG surge when Joao Neves hit the post and Achraf Hakimi forced a good save from David Raya. That was sort of it, until the other side of Arsenal’s 2-0 lead.
Never mind. PSG can surely get the points for the top 24 against PSV Eindhoven and Salzburg. That would take them to nine, which most models predict will be more than safe enough for the play-offs.
Remember, this isn’t a league either. It’s an elimination format.
It is also why even Celtic’s 7-1 humiliation at the feet of Borussia Dortmund didn’t feel all that important, except for pride. Such a result really does little damage to the Scottish champions’ prospects of making it because this would have been one of those games they were expected to lose anyway. They are instead looking to crunch matches against Club Brugge and Young Boys.
That leads into one of the most common defences of this new format, since the argument is that it’s a good thing that such “middle class” clubs still have a chance in the way they didn’t in the old group stage.
That’s precisely the point, though. Celtic only have to rely on that because three decades of football policy – and especially the last eight years – have allowed financial gaps to develop to a level that has damaged competition. The Champions League’s distorting prize money had been a primary engine in this, to the point where the fumes it produced caused the competition to start spluttering.
It has been Uefa’s greatest failure, which has led to this Frankenstein of a competition. That’s another element worth remembering, as the games remain so forgettable. This is by design.
The wealthiest clubs – going right back to Milan and Rangers in the late 1980s – felt that European competition was too unpredictable, which wasn’t good for accounts or financial planning. They needed more security. They needed more games, more guarantees. More, more, more.
That is what this is. It’s predictable. It’s filler. It’s one grand showcase of there’s an inherent tension in treating competitive sport as a “business” alone, for clubs that don’t actually need to make profit. They just need to be sustainable.
Can interest in this be sustained?
It is obvious that some games towards the very end are going to have jeopardy, probably around seventh-to-ninth and 23rd-25th, since those are the cut-off positions for the last 16 and the play-offs.
When they come around, there will inevitably be talk about the success of the format, and how great it is. That happened with the previous eight-group format, too.
When that’s said, it’s worth remembering this is just the minimum requirement for sport: some jeopardy.
We’ll instead have had this mass of games – likely well over 100 of the opening 144 – that don’t actually feel like proper sport. They’re just… filler. Fixtures to be fulfilled. It’s far too many matches to eliminate far too few teams.
You almost couldn’t have a better blueprint for ruining a good thing, and causing people to switch off. One wonders what the viewing figures are, particularly from fans of clubs not involved.
Arsenal supporters are of course fully immersed in this season, because it’s going so well, and they look so good. They should be thinking about winning the competition.
It just says a lot that they don’t even have to think about that for months. They just have to trudge through this group stage. They are currently eighth in a table that doesn’t feel like it’s even worth looking at right now.
Many might be already saying the same about some of these games.